The
first major studio release rated NC-17, this arty biopic featured
a guilt-free menage a trois, nudity and Uma Thurman in a lesbian
kiss.

Director Philip Kaufman's frank and bold treatment
of sex was based on the diaries of author Anais Nin. It was the first major
studio feature film to be released with the new and revised NC-17
rating by the MPAA (due to an explicit yet simulated scene of lesbian
oral sex) - a rating designed to distinguish erotic-and-serious adult
films from pure hard-core X-rated pornography.

It had the second
highest box-office gross of all-time at $11.6 million, about half
of the #1 NC-17 film of all time, Showgirls (1995) at $20.3
million. For awhile, it was banned in South Africa.

The sexually-provocative biodrama with themes of voyeurism,
partner-swapping, three-way sex, and both hetero- and homo-sexuality
told about a love triangle between three individuals in 1930s Bohemian
Paris:

petite, sexually-liberated writer Anais Nin (Maria
de Medeiros), unsatisfyingly married to Hugo Parker Guiler (Richard
E. Grant) who called her by his pet name "Pussywillow"

during the opening credits, there was a postcard
view of the famous erotic woodcut (The
Dream of the Fisherman's Wife) from Japanese artist Hokusai,
depicting oral sex between two octopi and a young, naked Ama
pearl diver; Anais claimed that with the entire collection of
erotic items in a box she found in a closet, she became acquainted
"with the endless varieties of the erotic experience"

Anais slow-dancing (and deep lesbian kissing) with
June in an underground lesbian club

Anais' many passionate and eager couplings with
Henry during their affair together, including her first time with him
furtively behind a curtain in a club during a syncopated dance
(he told her: "I love you, I need you" and she told him that she
also loved him)

an "exhibition" of lesbian love-making in a private
show conducted in a mirrored brothel room, viewed by Anais and
Hugo, between Henry's blonde whore (Brigitte Lahaie) and another
frail prostitute (Maïté Maillé)
- when Anais advised the aggressive female: "Stop pretending
to be a man"

Anais' love-making scene with her lover/cousin
Eduardo (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) in the midst of her other
affair

Selected Scenes in the First NC-17 Rated Film
- Henry
& June

Anais with Hugo

Anais' Love-making with Henry

Anais' 'rape' by husband Hugo

Lesbian Club "Exhibition"

In another scene, Anais described an hallucinatory
"nightmare" dream-fantasy of sex with June (and Henry's blonde
whore) in an upper loft, experiencing 'abnormal pleasures' ("I
begged her to undress. I asked her to let me see between her legs.
As she lay over me, I felt a penis touching me..."). Anais
also had a climactic love-making scene with Henry after he had finished
his novel 'Tropic of Cancer' - while Hugo was downstairs. [Note: "Tropic
of Cancer" was published in 1934, and banned in all English-speaking
countries for 27 years.]

In the concluding scene, Anais and June got together
for love-making (while Henry was asleep in another room of the house)
after which an accusatory June confronted Anais about her manipulative
and self-serving affair with Henry:

You just want experience. You're a writer.
You make love to whatever you need. You're just like Henry...I
can see exactly what you're doing. You're so slippery, so slippery.
You bitch. Liar, trickster. You bought his love...You both robbed
me blind. You stole everything.

Anais broke off her relationship with both Henry &
June and returned to her husband Hugo. As she drove away with him,
she lamented (in voice-over) her lost loves, although Henry and
Anais remained "life-long friends and supporters":

That morning I wept. I wept because I loved the streets
that took me away from Henry and would lead me back to him. I wept
because the process by which I had become a woman was painful.
I wept because from now on, I would weep less. I wept because I
had lost my pain and I was not yet accustomed to its absence.

Director/co-writer Oliver Stone's complex,
provocative docu-film thriller was a controversial, speculatively revisionistic,
historical epic surrounding one-time New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's (Kevin
Costner) investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination on November
22, 1963. Its intriguing interpretation was based on the well-publicized
and alleged conspiracy theories of the obsessed attorney about the mystery
of the death, and on the testimony of a number of unreliable witnesses.

The film masterfully assembled and merged,
like a jigsaw puzzle, various sources of material (newsreels, photos,
black and white, color, 8 mm, 16 mm, etc., minature models, and re-enactments)
into one film to create a semblance of truth, but not necessarily real
history. However, Stone was attacked and dismissed by the American media, CBS, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek and The Washington Post, for deliberately combining factual and
historical footage with hypothetical footage to make it appear to be
one seamless, objective and truthful record of events. In response, Stone released the screenplay, annotated with its factual sources.

The courtroom trial scene in the last half of the
film featured three very memorable segments to disprove the idea that
assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) acted alone:

(1) a detailed
analysis of the famous Zapruder film (shot near the grassy knoll) that was subpoened by Garrison's office, but unseen by the American public ("a picture speaks a thousand words, doesn't it?"); the film disproved the Warren Commission's open and shut case of "three bullets, one assassin" - "the time frame of 5.6 seconds established by the Zapruder film left no possibility of a fourth shot"; Garrison called junior counselor Arlen Spector's theoretical assertion of the 'Magic Bullet Theory' -- "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people"

(2) the scornful rejection
of the Magic Bullet theory (the 'official' Warren Commission version
of events) which Garrison declared unlikely or impossible with
a walk-through, a scale model, and diagrams of the bullet's zig-zag path presented for evidence - "this single bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of a lone assassin and once you conclude that the magic bullet could not create all seven of those wounds, you have to conclude that there was a fourth shot and a second rifle, and if there was a second rifle, then by definition there had to be a conspiracy"

and (3) Garrison's impassioned, patriotic closing
argument - his final summing up of the case with his damnation of the entire US military-industrial complex and the possibility of a massive conspiracy and coverup (allegedly aided
by Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones)), finishing with Garrison staring directly into the camera and addressing
the jury (and viewing) audience: "It's up to you"

This Walt Disney feature film animation engendered considerable controversy
for its pro-Western portrayal of Aladdin and Jasmine (always unveiled),
the fact that turbaned characters were bald, and all the villainous
characters were Arab caricatures.

Another conflict arose, following protests
from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), regarding
the lyrics in one of the verses of the opening song "Arabian Nights."
The original lyric about the film's Arabian setting ("Where they
cut off your ears if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey,
it's home") was censored/dubbed out and changed to "Where
it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey,
it's home" for subsequent video releases in 1993 and for the re-released
soundtrack.

Sharon
Stone's turn as a seductive, bisexual murderess made her a star,
but the movie raised hackles for its misogyny and salacious depiction
of lethal lesbians.

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas created this
exploitative, soft-porn, excessive, controversial film known for
its negative portrayal of lesbianism, offensive violence, initial
X-rating, and voyeuristic, sensational, gratuitous sex. The
film was criticized for its permissiveness, steamy content (scene
of cunnilingus), unnecessary nudity, its depiction of lesbian characters,
and its scenes of bondage (especially with reversed roles).

Threatened with an NC-17 rating, and reduced to R rating
(with cuts), this flashy film was then released with a more explicit
'Director's Cut' version for the video market, with the extra-steamy
scenes. It gained its greatest notoriety for the film's interrogation
well-known scene. Frank and raw dialogue, such as this much-quoted
line reprised at the end of the film ("How
about we f--k like minks, raise rug rats, and live happily ever after"),
was woven throughout.

Womens' groups called the film misogynistic, and gay-rights
groups in San Francisco (including The Gay & Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation (GLAAD)) called it stereotypically-homophobic
and gay-bashing. They charged that the main murderess suspect in
the film was a denegrating portrayal since she was a mentally-unstable,
psychotic lesbian and bi-sexual that was potentially homicidal. Activists
groups such as Queer Nation and ACT-UP protested at multiple San
Francisco shooting locations, chanting
"Hollywood, you stink" and they attempted to disrupt filming.

The opening scene of a naked couple engaged in rough
sex in a mirrored boudoir included views from all angles (and a
reflection in a ceiling mirror) of a couple making love - the unidentified
female was atop rock star Johnny Boz (Bill Cable), and elements of
S&M
were revealed when she tied his arms to the bedpost - before stabbing
him to death with an icepick. Sharon Stone starred as
bisexual authoress Catherine Trammel who became a murder suspect
(known for using an ice pick in her writings), and was investigated
by detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas).

The sexually-charged film featured the taunting femme
fatale predator with an insatiable sexual appetite and possibly
homicidal tendencies. She matter-of-factly flirted and manipulatively
toyed with the libidos and sexual appetites of the middle-aged
men in a police station room. The suspect brazenly talked
about sex, smoked (in a no-smoking area), and uncrossed and re-crossed
her legs while wearing a short white mini-dress (without panties).
She tersely revealed her past sexual activities with the victim and played
sex games with their minds. After admitting to cocaine use with the
dead Mr. Boz, she surprised the audience by directing a provocative,
follow-up question toward Nick: "Have you ever f--ked on cocaine,
Nick?" She
smiled and revealingly uncrossed her legs (removing her left leg
from atop her right leg), flashing her panty-less private parts at
him. And then she re-crossed her legs in the opposite direction,
crossing her right leg atop her left.

At her home, Catherine Trammel flaunted her bisexuality
when she introduced her lesbian girlfriend to Nick. She kissed her
consort Roxy (Leilani Sarelle), fondled her nipple, and then stood
with her arm around her, asking: "You two have met, haven't
you?" Then
came a provocative three-some scene at a crowded nightclub disco
(between the lesbian lovers Catherine and Roxy) - and an aroused
Nick voyeuristically watching them as they touched and French-kissed
and then also watched them from outside a nightclub toilet stall.

Later on the dance floor, Catherine (with
a beguiling look) turned with her back toward Roxy, permitting her
female lover to touch her breasts. In an instant, Catherine left
Roxy, presumably to provoke and enflame the jealousy of her female
lover. Catherine's live-in lover must resort to dancing with a black
man. Catherine became Nick's dance partner - he rubbed her butt against
his crotch. He turned her, suddenly grabbed her ass, pressed her toward
himself, and then started kissing her on her neck and lips. Feverishly,
they consumed each other in the middle of the writhing, turning bodies
of other dancers.

The scene immediately transitioned to the infamous,
intimate, graphic, roughhouse sex scene between Nick and Catherine
in her mansion in San Francisco. Afterwards, he was astonished to learn
that Roxy had been encouraged to watch Catherine's heterosexual
couplings with men.

The film was also criticized for its rough, forceful
near-rape sex scene between detective Curran
and his police psychologist 'girlfriend' Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne
Tripplehorn) when
he ripped off her clothes and took her from behind. Back at Beth's
apartment in her living room, Nick took out his sexual aggression
against her. He immediately forced himself on her, pinning her arms
up on the wall, kissing her forcefully, and ripping her dress open
in the front. In the misogynistic, near-rape scene, he lustfully
pushed his hands under her bra, scooped out her breasts, and kissed
her even harder. Then he aggressively draped her over the sofa as
she protested: "Nick, stop, no!" He pulled off his own
pants and animalistically entered her from behind, climaxing quickly.

Although it appeared that the case was solved and Dr.
Garner was implicated (although she might have been framed?), the
final scene extended the ambiguity of Catherine's murderous instincts.
As Nick and Catherine made love in his bedroom, they kissed each
other, and she rolled atop him. As in all their other amorous couplings,
she straddled him, stretched back, and began rocking back and forth
on his hips. As she climaxed, she reached back, and then suddenly
came down on top of him - her whole body stretched across his - he
remained motionless. Was he alive? Had he been pierced with an icepick?
Not yet. As Catherine and Nick kissed with more and more passion,
the camera slowly descended down her side of the bed. When it lowered
to the floor, the camera came to rest with a close-up of the murder
weapon - a thin, steel-handled icepick.